How Keenu Built the Financial Foundation to Go After Funding
- Founder: Francis Carlisle
- Sector: EdTech / AI
- Stage: Pre-seed, actively raising
- Location: Manchester
The Keenu business
Keenu is a Manchester-based EdTech startup using AI to help non-native English speakers learn English, improve their skills, and pass high-stakes exams like IELTS. In a world where a class of 20 students shares one teacher, Keenu makes truly personalised, one-to-one feedback scalable giving every student the attention they need to improve, without burning out every teacher in the process.
Ten months in, Keenu has 10 paying customers, two products live, and is now entering conversations with angel investors and VCs.
The challenge Keenu was dealing with
Francis came from an English teaching background. His co-founder Niall came from tech. Between them, they had product vision, deep sector knowledge, and a genuine problem worth solving. What they didn’t have was anyone who understood startup finance.
“Neither of us really come from a finance background. Knowing what investors want to see from a startup going for investment that was a totally new world to us.”
Francis knew that at some point an investor was going to ask to see a financial model. He wanted to be ready not scrambling to put something together on the spot, and not turning up with a scrappy spreadsheet that would undermine what was actually a strong idea.
But the challenge went deeper than just needing a model. As a first-time founder, Francis was dealing with what he calls the “unknown unknowns” all the things you don’t know you need to think about until someone points them out.
Things like churn benchmarks, revenue timing, cost build-up, and how to frame numbers in a way that makes sense to a VC rather than just a founder.
“A VC might say to you, ‘these numbers are 100 times lower than we’d be interested in’ and you just don’t know that until reality hits you in the face.”
Why did you choose to work with Powdr?
Francis had heard Powdr’s name come up independently through angel investment circles and investment advisors people with no connection to Joe or Nicola, who were pointing to Powdr as the go-to for founders getting investment-ready. That social proof, combined with a personal introduction, made the decision easy.
“Not only did I know Joe and Nicola were top people, people totally unconnected to either of us were saying, this is the product you should be using.”
There was also something else. As a founder wearing twenty different hats, Francis wasn’t looking to become a finance expert. He needed someone to demystify it, guide him through it, and make sure the work actually got done.
“The fact that there’d be some hand-holding from the Powdr team, just demystifying things that was quite attractive to me.”
What we did together
Francis came to Powdr before Keenu’s friends and family round early, with ideas that were, in his words, “very underbaked.” No product roadmap written down, no pricing confirmed, no clear sense of costs.
Rather than waiting until things were tidier, the Powdr team started exactly where Francis was.
Over a series of focused 1:1 sessions with Nicola, they worked through everything from scratch product vision, revenue streams, when income would realistically start flowing, what the cost structure would look like, and how to build a model that could grow as Keenu did.
Nicola’s approach was direct: keep asking why, keep pressure-testing the assumptions, and keep pushing Francis to turn “woolly ideas” into real numbers.
What was built:
- A clean, investor-ready financial model built for pre-seed / SEIS fundraising (c.£200k–£250k)
- Revenue forecasting across multiple product lines, tied to realistic customer acquisition timelines
- A cost and hiring plan mapped to product milestones
- Support with the financial requirements for SEIS Advanced Assurance
- Outputs structured specifically for how investors expect to read and interrogate a model
“It was like a crash course not just in financial modelling, but in startup finance in general. And a big part of that was the unknown unknowns. There were things I’d just never considered because I’d never come across them before.”
Keenu experience with Powdr
Francis describes the process as intense and genuinely transformative.
The sessions were long and demanding, with Nicola consistently pushing him to justify assumptions and think through second and third-order implications. But that challenge was exactly what was needed.
“I was exhausted after those sessions, but they were extremely beneficial.”
He also credits the Powdr team’s responsiveness throughout. When he ran into confusion like whether to enter churn figures as positive or negative numbers (something that, he admits, Nicola was still patiently correcting nine months later) the team were quick to help and used that feedback to improve the platform itself.
“Powdr were very good at taking feedback and acting on it. We have to make this idiot-proof, basically and they listened.”
The impact Powdr had on Keenu
The difference, Francis says, is confidence. Before Powdr, Keenu’s vision was real but hard to communicate. Numbers were vague. The roadmap was in Francis’s head. Conversations with investors felt daunting.
Now, ten months in with two products live and 10 paying customers, Keenu is actively approaching angels and VCs and Francis can walk into those conversations knowing exactly what he’s talking about.
“Now I’m able to say with confidence: in this number of months, the next product comes out. We expect this number of customers. Five years down the line, we hope to exit at this number. And that’s based on all of these numbers. It’s been a total sea change in our ability to communicate our vision both financially and in terms of the product roadmap.”
“We wouldn’t be in this position without Powdr. We feel way more confident having those conversations and being able to express our financial model in a way that makes sense to VCs and angels.”
What’s next for Keenu?
Keenu is now actively raising and looking to connect with angel investors and SEIS-eligible funds, ideally with experience or networks across EdTech, ESL and language schools, international education, or AI-driven learning.
Would Francis recommend Powdr?
“Definitely give it a go. If you’re someone where there’s no one on your team who really knows finance in any depth and you’re going for investment, you want to feel confident, you want to get your ducks in a row it makes a lot of sense. It’s essentially one less thing to worry about.”
Keenu is an active Powdr client. If you’re a founder preparing for investment and want to find out how Powdr can help, get in touch.